Russ&Suzie

Trip Log
2004-03-07 03:02:14 (UTC)

Dehli's Qutb Minar & National Museum

We're winding down our trip. Today will take it easy,
partly because the national holiday "Holi" is on and
involves celebration and good times. Everything is shut
down. People on the streets squirt colors on other people
and you see color-besmeared folks around about
anticipating the joyous occasion. It's a time for
reconciliation when enemies cannot be refused hospitality
and many folks make up their animosity. Lots of bhang
(marijuana) and other intoxications involved so that a bit
of riotous living.

We took a cab to eat a nice meal at the flagship hotel of
the Taj chain (named, appropriately enough, The Taj Mahal)
and saw a Holi bonfire lit. We'd seen the wood piles in
Varanasi (Benares) where Holi had been anticipated and
lots of pigment for sale in sidewalk shops. We as
westerners have been advised to stay in and so will do. I
have some new books and am very content to lay low and
luxuriate in new information. Our guide yesterday did
counsel us that this is a joyful time and that if there's
a bit of excited disinhibiton (my terms not his), that may
be the price to pay for this being a very peaceful
society -- as indeed it surely seems to be, as seen in
traffic, for instance; no-one seems to take personally
being cut off or passing given the least opportunity.
You're expected to do it if you can!

Before going on, I made another list of things in a
notebook Beccy Westphal gave me a few years back so will
now go to that, noting along the way that we appreciated
nice notes from Ann Seccombe, Alison Gilliland, Larry
Wells, and Monique Isham of late. We've mentioned Larry's
name a number of times as he came over to visit India from
where he lives in Tokoyo. He worried about whether
answering here might allow spam to take hold. The My-Diary
folks seem reasonably careful on that score, but of course
one never knows these days. My brother and sister-in-law,
Wayne and Ane, have used the conventional route for that
reason, and have even changed their email lately to
forestall the increasing spam-loads of late. I feel
fortunate in having an internet based free email service
(Yahoo) that has a screening service and for the most part
it seems pretty accurate although occasionally there's a
false positive from a friend that I switch to the inbox.

1. Holi -- I've already discussed this, mentioning in
passing that substances seem freely imbibed. I'll take
that up: Bhang shops are all over and there was a recipe
in the morning's paper on how to serve it to Holi guests
(suggesting that if you have guests one should not imbibe
more than two portions of whatever that was. We learned
that Hindus are proscribed from drinking alcohol but many
nevertheless do imbibe; we drank some Indian wine from a
vineyard east of Mumbai last night and the maitre-de
suggested that it may be coming in more; formerly,
influenced by the British, whisky was more in vogue but he
predicts a continental trend (he had spent some time in
Italy). Even in the Rig Veda (a most ancient scripture, a
translation of which I have by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty of
University of Chicago), Soma, a magical substance, is
elevated to god-status (along with 33-million other
entities - tolerance extends to other gods and I suggested
yesterday to my fellow travelors that part of the Hindu
religion involves much personal creativity). In Rajasthan
we learned that opium use was very much part of the Rajput
(warrior) ethic - but for a reason that I hadn't
anticipated: not relief of pain or euphoria but to
increase bonding with one's fellow warriors.

2. We toured besides the Taj Mahal hotel yesterday, though
I'll pause for a moment on it. Our Nikko hotel is much
more humble though perfectly satisfactory. But a flagship
hotel should be special and this one was with a large
Shivalingum as a marble fountain the middle of the lobby.
An early guide suggested that this symbolizes less a
phallic kind of thing than energy. It explicitly
represents a penis in a vagina (lingia-yoni) so one can
certainly say that sex is involved, but since this stems
from pre-Vedic times (as they say) it's been around for a
long time.

Arvind Sharma, our guide yesterday, was another engaging
teacher! WE saw 12th century Moslem towers and remains and
memorials at Qutb Minar. He told a story of that period
that from his Hindi-perspective foreshadowed the present
Muslim-Hindi conflicts: a Muslim intruder King invaded the
kingdom of a Hindu King but was not only repulsed but the
foreign King was captured. The Hindu King behaved in a
forgiving way and spared his life but when the opposite
situation happened (the invader a second time triumphed),
a similar sparing did not occur: the Hindu King was
dispatched. A millennium later, feelings still remain!

But on our way to dinner last night I did see a graffitied
wall that read in large red letters, "If two Germanys can
unite, might India and Pakistan reconcile?" The newspapers
noted that Colin Powell will revisit on March 15, two
years after his interventions helped India and Pakistan
reconcile. Issues are different now, the article noted,
but there was a sense of great appreciation. We wistfully
recall that Colin Powell's wife had nixed his running for
president, and can understand her feeling, but also
sometimes feel that her respected wish and gain is our
loss, as we see what has happened with the Bush
Administration. And this morning Ralph Nader's new
presidential bid announcement occupied the paper again:
the NY Times suggested that this may bring in another Bush
administration. But I digress.

We also saw Hamoyun's tomb. He followed the garden-loving
Barbur as the second great Moghul. Ann Seccombe, Suzie &
Lisa's cousin, a landscape architect, noted the Moghul's
great love for gardens and that she'd seen the plans for
the Taj Mahal's semitropical gardens that still require
prodigious amounts of water. She correctly inferred that
we're feeling dusty and dry for much of our trip. Rains
have been down sub-continent-wide. Dehli is green but
because it's the capital city and irrigation resources are
diverted its way. Again I digress.

The tomb preceded the TAj Mahal but also had now dry pools
and water-ways. Much smaller, didn't have the white marble
that Shah Jahan loved, has a number of interesting tombs
on the surface plaza: Dara, brother of Aurangzeb who was
killed by him. Much more liberal, he didn't have the
fanatic Muslim convictions of Aurangzeb who as the last of
the "great" Moghuls overturned the reconciling features of
Akbar and Akbar's successors. Arvind Sharma suggested that
Hamoyun's greatest contribution was production of Akbar.
Otherwise the second great Moghul was someone who liked to
relax with the aid of opium. The other addicted one was
Jahangir whose major claim to fame was the production of
Shah Jahan. The author of The Great Moghuls suggests that
Jahangir was underrated, however, as he was a great
partron of the arts and his picture gained the cover
placement for the book.

We also saw (from a distance as we passed them several
times) the government buildings, the Arch of India, and
recalled CAnberra in that there extend broad avenues and
circules in master-planned directions that also recall
WAshington's design. Great names such as Man Singh, Nehru,
Indira Ghandi, Mahatmah Ghandi, Ashoki grace the avenues.
And there's a smog that pervades the atmosphere.

WE went with great profit to the National Museum.
Foreigners much pay much more than citizens (fair enough),
including a good fee for using a camera, but I did then
rankle when I learned that I couldn't take pictures in the
Harrappan archeological exhibits. But what a treasury of
sculptures otherwise! So I took lots of pictures and had a
good time. What a rich and ancient culture.

Our final tour of the day was not the Crafts Museum
itself, but its museum store! It had the benefit of our
not being hassled by the hawkers (they and the beggers
make going through some places akin to the gauntlet --
Lisa's phrase). But we did see the old sense of Indian
slow bureaucracy in action: lots of carbons, slow and
precise noting, yet smiles and great pleasure on the part
of the sari-clad woman who waited on us at seeing the
twins and recognizing their twinship.

I bought two books by K. C. Aryan. ONe debunked the "Aryan
invasion" theory. He said there exists no archeological
evidence of such an invasion and that they were indiginous
to the subcontinent as were the Dravidians. Kala, an early
guide, had suggested that too, but with less precision.
K.C. suggested that there had been a mother god society
that still persists in pockets (there are many variations
on this entity, Sarasvati goddess of learning is one, and
Durga goddess with power is another. The Aryans, he
suggested, were the ones who brought a more man-centered
culture. It's a wonderful book and I am reading it with
great pleasure (I like theory debunking, of course),
wondering what Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty thinks of it.
Since she's likely in Chicago, I might try to pay her a
visit or write her a letter (or so my morning musings
went).




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